GIFT   OF   t 


"The  Nations  but  the  Guinea  Stamp 
A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." 


AN    ADDRESS 


BY 


MR.  DARWIN    P.  KINGSLEY 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE  NEVV-YORK  LIFE 
INSURANCE  COMPANY 


kH 


RESPONDING  ON  BEHALF  OF  THE  WORLD'S 
INSURANCE  CONGRESS  TO  ADDRESSES  OF 
WELCOME  BY  THE  GOVERNOR  OF  THE  STATE 
OF  CALIFORNIA  AND  THE  MAYOR  OF  THE 
CITY  OF  SAN  FRANCISCO.  OCTOBER  4,  1915 


PANAMA-PACIFIC  INTERNATIONAL 
EXPOSITION 


PRINTED  BY  THE  COMPANY 


\^> 


A'i 


..b 


"The  Nations  but 

the  Guinea  Stamp. 

*      *      * 

*      * 

H.       H-       H-       H'       >{■ 

A  Man's  a 

Man  for  a'  that". 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

Microsoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/addressbymrdarwiOOkingrich 


Insurance  is  ordinarily  regarded  as  a  device  by 
which  life,  property,  and  business  are  protected  against 
the  vicissitudes  of  time  and  circumstance.  It  is  much 
more  than  that.  It  is  a  destroyer  of  prejudice  and  the 
enemy  of  a  very  dangerous  kind  of  ignorance.  It  ap- 
peals to  the  mass  feeling,  to  those  impulses  which  fore- 
shadow the  ultimate  achievement  of  human  solidarity. 
In  its  offices  and  on  its  streets  the  peoples  of  all  lands 
and  of  all  races  meet  and  mingle  daily.  It  is  a  world- 
exposition  whose  doors  never  close. 

Thus  welcomed  to  this  City  of  Dreams,  to  this  epi- 
tome of  all  that  was  best  in  our  recent  civilization, 
insurance  naturally  feels  itself  no  stranger  and  indeed 
flatters  itself  that  whatever  pertinance  the  formulas  of 
welcome  may  or  may  not  have  on  some  occasions,  the 
proprieties  were  not  transgressed  nor  the  truth  surpassed 
in  the  fervent  and  eloquent  speeches  of  welcome  just 
delivered  by  the  executive  heads  of  the  State  and  City. 

A  world-exposition  should  reflect  world-conditions; 
it  presupposes  world-wide  intercourse,  world-wide  under- 
standing, and  some  considerable  degree  of  world-wide 
sympathy  and  faith. 

Tested  by  this  rule,  the  Panama-Pacific  International 
Exposition  seems  not  a  real  thing  but  a  resurrection  of 


383369 


an  earlier  and  better  age.  It  stands  out  like  a  half-sub- 
merged mountain  peak  marking  the  spot  where  a  noble 
continent  once  was.  It  tells  us  that  even  in  our  daysmen 
did  laugh  together,  and  did  love  each  other  and  did  have 
faith. 

This  exposition,  therefore,  is  more  than  an  exposition. 
It  does  not  reflect  the  condition  and  present  purposes  of 
the  world.  If  it  did,  it  would  emphasize  the  possibility, 
aye  the  probability,  that  we  may  not  for  generations  have 
a  civilization  equal  to  that  of  August  1,  1914.  This  Capi- 
tal of  the  arts,  the  learning,  and  the  achievement  of  the 
world,  does  not  remotely  suggest  such  reflections.  It  sug- 
gests living  beauty,  and  international  understanding  and 
international  peace.  We,  alas!  know  that  its  suggestion 
is  little  better  than  a  mockery,  because  these  splendid 
piles,  these  soaring  arches  stand  in  the  forum  of  the  world 
not  unlike  those  pathetic  pillars  of  the  temple  of  Castor 
and  Pollux  in  the  Roman  Forum,  eloquent  of  the  power 
and  beauty  of  a  dead  civilization. 

Against  the  methods  which  resulted  in  the  existing 
European  horror  insurance  has  always  been  a  warning 
and  a  protest  and  has  always  suggested  a  remedy.  It 
has  been  a  warning  and  a  protest  because  it  has  taught 
the  insufficiency  of  the  unit  of  anything — whether  that 
unit  be  a  man  or  a  business  or  a  nation.  It  has  suggested 
a  remedy  not  only  because  of  the  billions  which  it  has 
distributed  (and  is  distributing  now)  in  alleviating  the 
tragedies  of  life  but  because  it  has  taught  and  practiced 
the  doctrine  of  co-operation,  in  which  lies  the  greater 
portion  of  any  existing  and  reasonable  hope  that  our  civ- 
ilization may  not  after  all  be  utterly  overwhelmed. 

In  the  struggle  for  existence  insurance  is  a  device 
by  which  present  strength  unites  to  protect  society 
against  the  weakness  that  lurks  everywhere. 

Insurance  is  a  perpetual  warning  that  nationality 
as   a  basis   for   civilization   is   insufficient.      Civilization 


has  broken  down  because  its  units— the  nations— could 
severally  no  more  carry  their  individual  risk  than  a 
man  can  carry  the  risk  of  his  own  mortality.  If  each 
great  nation  had  a  world  completely  to  itself,  the  problem 
might  be  different.  But  our  problem  is  gravely  com- 
plex. Here  are  eight  great  powers  and  several  times 
that  number  of  lesser  sovereignties,  each  struggling  and 
developing  on  the  theory  that  they  severally  are  sub- 
stantially alone  in  the  world.  They  recognize  the  exist- 
ence of  other  powers  through  contracts  called  treaties. 
The  morality  of  these  treaties  is  historically  shown  to  be 
little  better  than  the  '4ionor"  which  exists  amongst  bul- 
lies and  thieves.  They  are  necessarily  interpreted  by 
their  makers  and  not  by  an  impartial  court,  because  there 
is  no  such  court,  and  can  be  none  under  the  existing 
doctrine  of  sovereignty. 

The  nations  have,  therefore,  lived  internationally  in 
an  order  where  the  hazard  was  greater  than  the  normal 
hazards  of  life  and  business.  It  could  hardly  be  called  a 
hazard  at  all ;  it  was  a  certainty.  This  world  struggle  was 
inevitable,  unless  radical  reorganizations  of  international 
relations  were  agreed  to,  unless  some  plan  of  interna- 
tional insurance  could  be  established.  Little,  however, 
was  done.  The  god  of  unconditioned  sovereignty  was 
everywhere  worshipped.  Nationality  impinged  on  na- 
tionality. The  world  grew  smaller.  The  international 
impact  grew  heavier.  Germans  saw  the  significance  of 
the  doctrine  of  sovereignty  in  the  time  of  the  Great 
Frederick.  They  began  to  get  ready.  The  other  Euro- 
pean nations  did  not  see  the  true  significance  of  the 
situation  and  prepared  only  half-heartedly  for  a  struggle 
upon  which  they  never  really  expected  to  enter. 

No  nation  took  the  lead  in  a  movement  to  insure  the 
perpetuity  of  all  through  assured  peace  for  all.  Ger- 
many, logically  following  the  doctrine  of  sovereignty, 
deliberately  prepared  to  impose  her  civilization  on  the 


entire  world.  The  other  nations  built  up  the  elaborate 
fabric  of  their  peaceful  purposes  without  adequate  prep- 
arations to  defend  that  structure  by  force  -on  the  one 
hand  or  a  program  of  world-co-oi>eration  to  preserve  it 
on  the  other. 

Germany  aimed  to  insure  herself  by  her  might,  which 
spelled  world  dominion  and  could  mean  nothing  else. 
The  other  nations  denied  any  ambition  for  world  do- 
minion and  at  the  same  time  utterly  neglected  to  protect 
their  integrity  through  co-operation.  The  so-called  Allies 
have  neither  lived  up  to  the  logic  of  unconditioned  sov- 
ereignty nor  prepared  the  world  for  its  opposite  through 
international  insurance. 

The  government  at  Washington,  whatever  else  it  is, 
is  a  great  insurance  company  whose  chief  function  is 
to  guarantee  the  peace  and  integrity  of  the  States.  It 
follows  precisely  the  principles  which  underlie  all  sound 
insurance.  Why  do  California  and  New  York  exist  as 
commonwealths  to-day?  Would  they  probably  exist  but 
for  the  Federal  Union?  Have  they  lost  any  dignity  or 
power  or  happiness  or  peace  because  they  have  duly 
subscribed  to  the  great  insurance  compact  of  1789? 
Would  the  nations  fare  differently  if  a  like  compact  were 
made  under  the  Federation  of  the  World? 

When  someone  remarks  that  we  must  travel  a  long 
way  forivard  before  we  reach  such  a  federation,  it  be- 
comes pertinent  to  reply  that  we  have  traveled  a  long 
way  backward  within  fourteen  months  and  at  infinite 
cost.  If  the  constructive  forces  of  the  world,  as  they 
existed  on  August  1,  1914,  could  have  been  brought 
into  co-operation,  if  the  bigotry  that  skulks  behind  what 
we  call  patriotism  could  have  been  exorcised,  if  human 
rights  and  not  national  sovereignty  could  have  been  made 
the  supreme  purpose  of  civil  society,  the  distance  which 
then  separated  us  from  a  condition  of  international  civili- 
zation and  world  peace,  real  peace,  lasting  peace,  would 


have  been  shorter  than  that  already  measured  in  the 
existing  plunge  towiard  chaos.  The  world  was  so  led 
that  it  stupidly  chose  to  plunge  toward  chaos. 

The  man  who  doesn  't  insure  his  life  and  his  property 
and  his  business  we  rate  as  stupid.  Sovereignty  is  to 
every  citizen  a  menace  as  real  as  that  of  the  vicissitudes 
of  life,  an  enemy  as  certain  and  cruel  in  its  average  ac- 
tion as  human  mortality.  Yet  self-governing  men,  men 
who  otherwise  think  and  look  facts  in  the  face,  make  little 
or  no  provision  against  its  operation.  In  seeking  for  a 
word  which  describes  the  condition  of  mind  of  the  aver- 
age citizenship  of  the  world  in  its  attitude  toward  sover- 
eignty, that  word  *^ stupid''  fits  better  than  any  word  I 
know. 

For  the  common  man  to  allow  his  governments  to 
force  him  to  kill  and  be  killed  for  no  sufficient  reason 
is  stupid ;  for  him  to  become  obsessed  with  the  idea  that 
the  peoples  of  other  nations  want  to  wrong  him  is  stupid ; 
for  him  to  believe  that  it  is  his  duty  to  slay  his  fellows 
and  destroy  their  property  is  stupid;  for  him  to  raise 
up  sons  with  infinite  pains  and  at  heavy  cost  to  have 
those  sons  fed  to  cannon  is  stupid;  for  him  not  to  see 
through  the  designs  or  unconscious  errors  of  politicians 
and  rulers  is  stupid;  for  him  to  have  followed  leaders 
so  wicked  or  so  blind  that  they  have  led  him  to  a  shambles 
was  stupid.  It  was  stupid — because  there  is  nothing 
about  this  war  that  suggests  Thermopylae  or  Tours  or 
Lexington  or  Gettysburg,  where  resistance  was  right- 
eously made  to  tyranny  or  error.  This  war  is  the  logical 
resultant  of  forces  that  were  perfectly  open  in  their 
operation  and  perfectly  certain  in  their  issue.  The  states- 
men of  the  world  could  not  or  did  not  rise  above  the 
provincialism  of  nationality.  Remorselessly  or  blindly 
or  stupidly — some  will  say  deliberately — they  drove  the 
great  machines  of  modern  civilization  into  each  other, 
head  on. 


We  have  on  our  Northern  border  all  the  ele- 
ments of  a  similar  collision.  Four  thousand  miles 
of  frontier  separate  us  from  Canada.  Along  that 
entire  front  there  has  been  no  fort  and  on  the  great 
inland  seas  which  lie  between  no  ship  of  war,  for 
well  nigh  a  century.  There  is  nowhere  in  the  world 
a  more  splendid  people  than  these  Canadian  neighbors. 
For  us  and  them  to  drift  along  in  a  sort  of  fool's  para- 
dise with  no  strong  and  definite  arrangement  which  will 
insure  them  and  their  sons  and  us  and  our  sons  against 
the  insanity  of  war  is  stupid.  We  have  been  lucky  for 
a  hundred  years  because  nothing  has  disturbed  our 
dreaming,  but  we  are  infinitely  stupid,  now  that  we  real- 
ize the  brutal  possibilities  of  present-day  civilization, 
in  continuing  conditions  fraught  with  such  hideous 
consequences.  It  would  be  as  savage  and  as  monstrous 
for  us  to  fight  with  Canada  as  it  would  be  for  California 
to  fight  with  Oregon.  There  is  no  natural  reason  why 
we  should — and  yet,  who  shall  say  what  may  happen 
while  they  assert  and  we  assert  that  our  rights  as  nations 
are  paramount  to  our  several  rights  as  individuals,  as 
human  beings? 

Consideration  of  our  relations  with  Canada  brings 
us  squarely  up  against  the  question  of  our  own  condition 
in  our  relations  to  international  problems. 

There  are  two  types  of  international  peace  insurance, 
one  already  established,  the  other  to  be  established : 

First.  Peace  insurance  based  on  might,— ex- 
pressed generally  in  a  great  standing  army 
and  a  powerful  navy. 

Second.  Peace  insurance  based  on  a  League  or  Fed- 
eration, to  which  the  nations  shall  have  dele- 
gated such  authority  as  will  enable  it  to 
enforce  peace  internationally. 

The  first  type  of  insurance  may  be  called  the  Euro- 

8 


pean  plan,  adopted  practically  by  all  the  great  trans- 
Atlantic  powers,  and  most  perfectly  exemplified  by 
Germany.  What  sort  of  peace  that  plan  produces  Europe 
now  teaches  us.  What  the  system  ultimately  leads  to 
Shakespeare  expresses  through  Ulysses  in  Troilus  and 
Cressida,  when  he  says: 

**Then  everything  includes  itself  in  power, 
Power  into  will,  will  into  appetite; 
And  appetite,  an  universal  wolf, 
So  doubly  seconded  with  will  and  power. 
Must  make,  perforce,  an  universal  prey, 
And,  last,  eat  up  himself.^' 

The  second  type  of  insurance  may  be  called  the 
American  plan  and  is  exemplified  in  the  Federation 
formed  by  the  Thirteen  Colonies  in  1789.  What  sort 
of  peace  insurance  the  American  plan  produces  the 
status  of  the  States  under  the  Federal  Union  shows. 
What  it  shall  lead  to  depends  largely  on  what  we  do 
in  the  near  future. 

We  are  now  at  the  parting  of  the  ways.  We  are 
living  by  the  American  plan ;  as  a  people  we  are  acting  as 
we  would  act  if  the  federation  of  the  world  were  already 
an  accomplished  fact.  As  a  government,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  are  acting  on  the  European  plan,  asserting  our 
rights  under  so-called  international  law,  and  threatening 
to  establish  those  rights  by  force.  We  may  now  and  then 
establish  our  rights  internationally  by  what  appears  to 
be  sheer  moral  force ;  but  the  man  is  blind  who  does  not 
see  that  in  a  direct  issue,  when  nations  believe  their  ex- 
istence is  imperilled,  the  only  law  is  still  the  law  of 
might. 

Believing,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  time  has  come 
for  the  world  to  abandon  the  European  plan,  and  believing 
that  in  our  own  Federal  Government  we  have  a  model  for 
the  government  of  the  world,  we  have  taken  .no  very  seri- 
ous steps  to  establish  an  adequate  League  or  Federation 
of  the  Nations,  without  which,  government  ally,  we  are  as 

9 


much  ahead  of  our  age  as  Eoger  Williams  was  ahead  of 
his  age,  and  incidentally  perhaps  we  are  inviting  the 
same  fate.  We,  therefore,  even  more  than  the  nations  op- 
posing Germany,  have  neither  lived  up  to  the  doctrine 
of  sovereignty  nor  to  the  doctrine  of  human  brotherhood. 

You  have  welcomed  us  to  an  Exposition  which  re- 
flects the  civilization  of  the  twentieth  century  at  its  zenith 
— possibly  it  reflects  civilization  at  the  highest  point  it 
ever  reached — if  we  consider  its  relation  to  the  forces 
of  nature  and  its  triumph  over  some  of  the  mysteries 
which  she  has  until  recently  so  sedulously  and  so  suc- 
cessfully kept  from  us.  But  the  tragedy  of  it!  You 
show  us  these  wonders  wrought  out  for  the  comfort  and 
happiness  of  mankind,  and  behold!  the  wonders  have 
become  monsters,  because  these  master  achievements 
have  been  perverted  into  implements  of  wholesale  mur- 
der.    Something  was  lacking  in  the  plan.     What  was  it! 

The  world  plan  which  this  Exposition  represents 
lacked  the  principle  for  which  this  Congress  stands.  The 
Exposition  represents  efficiency  without  conscience; 
progress  without  order;  power  without  responsibility. 
It  represents  the 'work  of  men  far  advanced  into  the 
unknown  who  have  since  become  confused  and  instead 
of  fighting  a  common  enemy  have  fallen  upon  each  other. 
They  advanced  so  eagerly  that  they  lost  touch,  they  lost 
sympathy — they  did  not  see  the  whole  problem. 

Insurance,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  an  intelli- 
gent appreciation  of  the  whole  problem.  Its  members 
do  not  become  confused  and  fight  each  other;  they 
help  each  other.  In  its  efficiency  there  is  the  conscience 
of  just  dealing,  which,  outside  the  New  England  con- 
science, is  perhaps  the  best  of  all  consciences.  In 
its  progress  there  is  the  strength  of  an  elbow  touch 
so  wide  that  disorder  cannot  break  in;  its  power 
lies  in  regulation  and  order  and  responsibility  and 
international  democracy. 

10 


This  Exposition  represents  the  doctrine  of  sover- 
eignty. This  Congress  represents  the  doctrine  of  de- 
mocracy. 

In  our  adherence  as  a  people  to  the  doctrine  of 
sovereignty,  we  are  not  only  blind  but  inconsistent  and 
very  nearly  unfaithful  to  our  own  political  creed.  In 
1776  our  fathers  signed  a  declaration  of  principles  as 
well  as  a  declaration  of  rights  and  of  independence. 
They  declared  their  adherence  to  the  self-evident  truth 
that  all  inien— not  citizens  of  the  United  States  alone, 
but  all  men— are  created  equal,  and  that  they  are  en- 
dowed by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights, 
etc.  That  all  men  are  created  equal  is  not,  of  course, 
wholly  true;  but,  in  so  far  as  it  is  sound  and  in  so 
,far  as  it  is  unsound,  it  is  equally  sound  and  unsound 
everj^where.  Its  error  does  not  follow  national  lines. 
In  international  relations  we,  with  all  other  republics, 
constantly  forget  that  men  are  men  whatever  their  coun- 
try, that  the  demos  is  the  demos  whatever  its  nationality. 

A  democracy  which  is  democratic  within  its  own  geo- 
graphic limits  only  and  treats  all  other  peoples  claiming 
other  allegiance  as  beyond  the  pale,  is  provincial  and 
selfish  and  has  missed  the  real  meaning  of  the  doctrine 
which  Jefferson  penned  and  the  fathers  signed. 

There  are  some  twenty-four  republics  in  the  world. 
Most  of  them  are  truly  democratic  internally.  All  of 
them  are  arbitrary,  autocratic  and  undemocratic  in  their 
relations  with  each  other.  Under  the  doctrine  of  un- 
conditioned sovereignty  democracy  dies  at  the  frontier 
of  every  republic. 

The  only  true  business  democracies  in  the  world 
to-day,  democracies  which  do  not  change  their  principles 
at  any  geographic  frontier  and  have  themselves  no  fron- 
tiers, are  the  great  insurance  corporations  whose  mem- 
bership is  world-wide  and  so  soundly  and.  so  democrati- 
cally related  that  no  dynastic  ambition,  no  claim  of  sover- 

11 


eignty,  can  at  all  change  their  beneficent  purpose  or 
materially  modify  their  humane  achievements. 

This  is  the  doctrine  that  will  be  preached  and 
preached  and  preached  in  the  several  sessions  of  this 
Congress.  Never  more  than  now  has  the  world  needed 
to  heed  its  truth.  Because  its  precepts  have  not  been 
followed,  governments  are  tottering,  millions  of  men 
have  already  died,  millions  of  women  have  been  crucified, 
billions  of  dollars  have  been  squandered.  Civilization 
based  on  the  doctrine  of  sovereignty  has  failed.  It  is 
time  to  adopt  a  new  program.  The  old  program  is 
damned  to  all  eternity.  That  new  program  must  rest 
upon  what  Burns  had  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote 

^^A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that.'' 

The  thing  of  supreme  value  in  this  world  is  human 
life — ^not  because  it  is  stamped  American  or  English  or 
Russian  or  French,  but  because  it  is  in  itself  the  sum 
of  all  values,  without  which  no  other  thing  has  any 
value.  Nationality  is  the  expression  of  a  fugitive  con- 
dition; in  sociology  it  is  what  Burns  also  had  in  mind 
when  he  said: 

**The  rank  is  but  the  guinea  stamp." 

Change  one  word  in  that  line  and  without  changing 
its  philosophy  you  have  the  whole  doctrine  of  this  Con- 
gress, the  doctrine  which  alone  can  restore  and  keep 
the  world's  peace. 

Change  the  word  ^^rank"  to  the  word  ^'nation",  and 
the  line  reads : 

**The  Nation's  but  the  guinea  stamp." 

Insurance  may  be  primarily  a  device  for  the  pro- 
tection of  lifCj  property  and  business;  but  it  deals  with 
and  is  faithful  to  the  principle  of  race  solidarity,  and 

12 


thereby  has  become  a  practical  and  powerful  leader 
amongst  the  forces  which  seek  the  ultimate  realization 
of  the  prayer  and  prophecy  which  closes  Burns 's  immor- 
tal declaration  of  the  rights  of  humanity : 

^  *  Then  let  us  pray  that  come  it  may, 
And  come  it  will  for  a'  that, 

*  *  #  #  #  #  4f: 

That  man  to  man  the  warld  o'er, 
Shall  brothers  be  for  a'  that/' 


13 


Caylord  Bros. 

Makers 
Syracus«.  N.  Y. 

PAT.  JAN.  21.  1908 


YC  23423, 


'>S33G9 


UNIVERSriY  OF  CAUFORNIA  UBE^ARY 


